Among all of horror’s subgenres, cosmic horror is one of the most evocative, and perhaps the most elusive.
With themes of cosmic insignificance and existential dread, works of cosmic horror not only dig into psychological terrors, but philosophical ones: upsetting what we think we know about our planet, the universe, and ourselves.
For folks new to the subgenre, this might seem pretty abstract! We’ve therefore penned this blog to delve more into what we consider cosmic horror to be, and what we’re seeking for our third anthology – which is open for submissions from the 1st October.
What’s so scary about the big, bad universe?
Cosmic horror has its roots in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Writers like Arthur Machen, William Hope Hodgson, Robert W. Chambers, and the more widely-known H. P. Lovecraft tapped into the awe and the anxiety that came with scientific discoveries regarding deep time and the vastness of the universe, through merging gothic horror, early sci-fi, and tales of the supernatural.
The central experience in cosmic horror is that of discovering that our reality is much larger and stranger than we once believed. In fact, the subgenre’s central thesis is that the universe defies comprehension – and that horrifying dangers may be waiting in its shadows.
In stories like Hope Hodgson’s The House on the Borderland, this takes the form of dilapidated country house whose occupant experiences disturbing visions of the distant future. In Chambers’ The King in Yellow, it’s a cursed playscript, describing a nightmarish otherworld and driving anyone who reads it to a dark end. Meanwhile, H. P. Lovecraft’s mythos features elder beings slumbering in the deeps of the ocean and the edges of space, waiting to devour mankind.
Later additions to cosmic horror have continued this unsettling tradition, such as Juni Ito’s Uzumaki, in which a peculiar town is plagued with eerie spirals, or Kathe Koja’s The Cipher, in which a mysterious hole appears in a grimy apartment building and hideously transforms whatever is lowered inside.
Throughout the genre, we find the following elements in common: a collapse of everyday comforts, altered states of consciousness, vulnerable and mutable bodies, cults and bizarre rituals, weird entities which struggle to be described, glimpses and rumours of powerful and ancient beings, and physical locations which disturb the constraints of space and time.
Cosmic or science fiction?
Cosmic horror and horror sci-fi are two overlapping subgenres. Cosmic horror was, as mentioned, born from scientific speculation. But as scientific knowledge and the genre of science fiction have developed over the last century, cosmic horror’s predilection for the supernatural has diverged from other forms of science-fictional horror, just as sci-fi’s tropes have become more ingrained. Cosmic horror notably does not need to be set in space, the future, or on distant planets. The darkness of the cosmos can invade a lighthouse, a suburban home, a rural bog at night.
One way you could separate the two is to say that horror sci-fi takes scientific concepts to extreme and terrifying ends – the ghastly void of space, the perils of cloning or teleportation – or places familiar horror scenarios of monsters and serial killers within a science fictional setting. Meanwhile, cosmic horror is interested in what is unknowable, filling the gaps in our knowledge with things that defy scientific explanation.
Of course, works of science fictional horror can include cosmic dread, too. In Alien, while the creature is a thought experiment in human parasitism, the mysteries surrounding the crashed spacecraft of mysterious elder beings is straight out of cosmic horror. Compare this with Aliens, which is a more straightforward work of action-horror sci-fi.
Some of the most recognisable works of twenty-first century cosmic horror come in the form of science-fiction videogames, such as Signalis and Dead Space. These very much use sci-fi tropes, being set in the future and deep space, but use these settings to provoke feelings of vulnerability in the weird depths of the universe.
So, what are we looking for?
We’re very happy to have science fiction-shaped horror stories, set in the future or other planets, provided they are also weird, existential, and philosophical. But we also encourage submissions of horror stories which don’t have typical science-fiction scenarios, provided they tap into a terror of a vast and unknowable universe. Think about what it feels like to look up on a dark night and feel suddenly very small, wondering what might be out there looking back at us.
Like many horror subgenres, cosmic horror is tied to fears of the other. Lovecraft’s racism is well-documented, and both his work and that of his contemporaries is riddled with orientalism, scientific racism, and ableism. We’re therefore very much interested in stories which speak back to early writers of the genre, and explore cosmic horror themes from minoritized perspectives.
We’re also interested in writers using this form of horror to interrogate the social and political structures which have a real existential impact on us, and to explore themes of climate and environment.
Whatever approach you take, your story needs to make us feel like a tiny creatures cowering under the shadow of things beyond our ability to comprehend. After all, isn’t that exactly what our place in the universe is, when you spend a little too long thinking about it?
Submit to our cosmic anthology between the 1st October and 30th November.
References and Further Recommendations
- Cosmic Horror Monthly, a magazine dedicated to the subgenre.
- Classic cosmic horror short stories include H. P. Lovecraft’s ‘The Colour Out of Space‘, Robert Chambers’ ‘The Repairer of Reputations‘, and Arthur Machen’s ‘The Great God Pan‘
- Thomas Ligotti’s short story collections, Teatro Grotesco and Songs of a Dead Dreamer and Grimscribe
- Novels such as Kathe Koja’s The Cipher, and Victor LaValle’s The Ballad of Black Tom, which revisits a H. P. Lovecraft story (still waiting for my copy of this one, but very much looking forward to it)
- Graphic novels such as Junji Ito’s Remina and Uzumaki
- Videogames such as Signalis, SOMA and Dead Space
100% human-written by Nathaniel, our editor
